Hólaskjól - Decision Day

Leaving a hut is always hard, because you know you will be on your own against all odds of iceland again. the start of the hike is already interesting because after a few kilometers we need to cross a very heavy river with a waterfall at the end. the existement of not falling is real. so again getting off trousers and shoes and use the hiking sticks as walking helps to avoid falling. we are in the water of the heavy stream up to the hip. it burns and hurts. but we cant move faster to avoid falling. after we did the crossing we have to laugh. maybe it was the thrill maybe the ridiculous situation of standing half naked in the middle of no-where at 15°C and calling it vacation.

The next kilometers are challenging us. not from a strenght perspective but from a psycological one.
We are in the highlands, we are hiking on old jeep tracks. the surrounding is green, everywhere. After we reached the horizon walking on jeep tracks we see again jeep tracks till the horizon. this repeats a few times. our brains are borded, we cant pause because it starts raining. we just walk, and walk, and walk.

since a few days i need to take painkillers against some heavy foot pain. maybe coming from walking for a lot of kilometers in neoprene socks, thats not helpful for sure.

We arrive at the highlands expedition camp, we ask for a room so we can recover 1 day. unfortunatly all rooms are booked. After we told the lady that we plan to hike further into the highlands she gives us a warning of really bad weather and storms with live danger in the coming days.

we are torn:
we came so far, we planed a lot, we managed to work around challenges. but now the body and the weather fights against us. this place is the last point where we could take a bus to our starting point. if we cross this point we are the next 8 days in the wild without an exit point.

We decide to set up the tent and see whats happening tomorrow regards our bodies and the uprising storm.Read more